"Tom Burton did strike me that night, and I would not tell the truth about it, Bat, because I was ashamed. I could not bring myself to admit that the man I had chosen for my husband would do such a thing. Other misdoings of his I could speak of—but that one I felt I must always keep to myself. His taking of my jewels I would not have held from you if I had not been afraid—afraid as I never was before."
"Of what?" asked Scanlon.
"Tom Burton was killed in his son's house; I knew that son; I knew what he had suffered all his life because of his father. I had heard the story in all its pitiful details. As a child he had been affronted and mishandled—as a boy—as a young man. He could never forget what his mother had been forced to endure; in his mind was always the fact that his sister was an invalid, perhaps for life, owing to the poverty brought on them by their father's neglect. With all this before me, can you wonder that I was afraid—afraid that the boy, in a moment of madness, had struck his father down?"
Bat drew in a long breath; in it there was a vast relief and a certain wonder.
"No," said he. "No; did you think that?"
"The idea was agonizing, and I made up my mind to do all I could to save him; that is why I appealed to you to get me all the intimate details. Then he was arrested; the body had been examined by the coroner, but no word was said of my jewels. It was then that a second thought came to me; suppose the murder had not been done, after all, in a sudden mounting of fury? Suppose the boy had seen the diamonds and had been tempted? Suppose he had killed Tom Burton in order to get possession of them? I was appalled at the notion, which with each moment became more and more a conviction. But I still held to the resolve to help him. What if he had done the thing? Was it altogether his fault? Was it not a part of an inheritance from a tainted father?
"So I said nothing of my loss of the jewels; the dread was in me that if the facts concerning them were known, suspicion would fall upon him—they might discover the stolen things on him and so he would lose his life, as well as his life's happiness, because of that man. I felt that no part of the truth must come out, that I must not even tell of my husband's visit to me that night; and when, in talking with you at your office, I permitted the fact to slip, I was startled."
"I remember that you were," said Bat. "And I wondered what it meant." He sat for a space and looked at her; and then, as she said nothing more, he went on: "You do not know it, but for days things fell in such combinations that more than once it looked as though you would be accused."
"Bat!" She cried out his name, frightened, and her wide brown eyes opened to their fullest extent.
"Even an hour ago I saw and heard some things which seemed to point to you. Maybe if my nerves weren't keyed up as they are I wouldn't have thought so. But, anyway, I did, and that's what brought me here."